Plea for the retention of mother
tongue, Kashmiri

Dr. K. L. Chowdhury

Language is the single most defining attribute of a people. Music, painting,
sculpture, dance and other arts originating from any region or country transcend
geographical confines for they don't need special training to be appreciated.
Language, on the other hand, being distinctive of geographical regions each
country having its own language and each state, district and even borough its
own dialect has to be learnt to be understood. Post-independent India was
divided into linguistic states mainly on the basis of language rather than
demographic and geographic considerations.

Language is the most important means of intercourse between humans. Without
it, like the mute, we have to resort to the elaborate and complex ritual of sign
language involving nodding, grunting, gestures, expressions and body movements
to communicate. Sometimes we make use of the mime as part of, or in lieu of, the
conventional conversational speech.

Mother tongue is the language, which one literally learns in the lap of
mother and from one's father, other relatives, friends and the community. It is
the language that has come down to us from generations as part of a larger
heritage. It is rooted in history, ritual, tradition and folklore. We may be
able to speak and write many languages and use them conveniently and profitably
in our commercial, professional and social transactions but it is the mother
tongue that comes to us naturally and spontaneously and that gives the best
statement to our deepest and purest thoughts. We think and dream in our mother
tongue. We laugh and weep in our mother tongue. We love best in it and we even
curse best in it. In fact our mother tongue is the sum total of the essence of
our thinking and feeling and expressing. Besides, there is a spiritual and a
metaphysical need in every human for his or her mother tongue. One can not deny
the need for a common language for a country like India and, for that matter, a
universal language for the world, which has shrunk into a global village because
of the breathtaking revolution in information technology, travel, trade and
commerce. Yet, there is an intense human need for topicality, for identity, and
for individuality and mother tongue is one such attribute of the humans that
fulfills this need. Imagine the dichotomy between our thoughts and expressions
when we think in our mother tongue and try to express in a different language
and loose the essence somewhere in between.

Kashmiri (Koshur) is the mother tongue of all people from the valley of
Kashmir-Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs alike. It is essentially a spoken language.
Till date no easy script has come our way and we have yet to resolve the
contentious issue of Persian versus Devnagri script. Since Koshur is not taught
in the schools, except for a brief honeymoon spell decades back, the language
has received a step-motherly treatment at the official as well the individual
levels, even by the most vociferous proponents of the so called Kashmiriyat.
Kashmiris of all faiths and pronouncements would rather teach themselves and
their children Urdu, Hindi, English and even Persian and Arabic rather than
Koshur. Besides the fact that it is neither an official language nor a medium of
instruction in schools nor of use in interstate or international commercial
dealings, there is an unexplained contempt for the language and kids are spoken
to in a language other than Koshur and discouraged to speak it not only in their
schools but even in their homes. Our children have thus been straitjacketed into
languages other than Koshur. In the process they have lost the case, essence and
fun of daily speech the humor, the pun and the proverb; the slang and the idiom;
the aphorism and the riddle etc., which spice the day to day conversation in
mother tongue. Where religion has divided the Kashmiris to the extent that the
minority Hindus have been forced into exodus, the apathy and neglect of their
mother tongue and the contentious issue of its script have played no small role
in widening the gulf between communities instead of cementing their relationship
by virtue of providing a common identity and an affable vehicle for interaction
and intercourse.

After more than a decade in exile our mother tongue has become tongue-tied.
The trend towards extinction of Kashur has got accelerated because of the
dispersal and Diaspora and the breakdown of family structure and the tearing
apart of the social fabric. The easy way out for our children, growing up or
born in exile, is to speak the language of the region to which they have
migrated, the language in which they would be welcome in the adopted milieu. Do
in Rome as the Romans do is an old adage and, one might add, better speak their
language too! You are immediately accepted in a place of adoption if you speak
their lingua. Conversely, how glad we feel when the shopkeepers of Jammu, where
many of us have migrated, not only make available for us all the provisions for
our ritual and daily use but also hawk them aloud in Koshur like Dejhouru
and Athoru, Sochal and Hannd, Munji and Nadru,
Warimuth and Hogade tapping the emotional appeal of our mother
tongue.

I can not fault the argument of friends that it is profitable as well as
practicable to adopt the language of the region, state or country where we
migrate besides having a working knowledge of Hindi, the national language, and
learning English, the global language. But I do not agree that learning Koshur
side by side is to burden your child with a language too many, and to muddle up
his learning process. The study of the psychology of learning has amply proved
that infants have an amazing power of learning many languages simultaneously
without causing any confusion and that with the passage of time they sift the
words, clauses and phrases of the different languages into their appropriate
domains. And with a large vocabulary at their command they learn to experiment
with the usage of words, borrowing them from one language to the other when they
tend to falter, thus unconsciously innovating and adding to the richness of
each. Let us not forget that the English language owes its wide acceptability
partly to an ever-growing vocabulary that it continues to borrow from other
languages enriching and expanding itself in the process.

Language is our identity like our name, parentage, place of birth, religion
etc. It links us to history, to our heritage and to our culture. And since
language identifies us and helps to bind us to our community, region and country
it is only our mother tongue which can rekindle the urge and affinity for roots
that is instinctual in all humans. Therefore it will be Koshur that will be the
guiding spirit in exile for our march back to our homeland in Kashmir. It is the
mother tongue that provides the best utterance to devotion and the most
effective voice to revolution? Lall Ded could not have poured out her soul
except in Koshur, nor could Mehjoor and Nadim fire the imagination of Kashmiris
in any other language. Manoj Jad, a little known modern Kashmiri poet, singing
in his loud invocatory voice his revolutionary song, holds a jam-packed audience
spellbound to rouse them into a hand-clapping chorus where half a dozen
scholarly discourses in another language from the same stage draw just a glimmer
of response.

How do we then revive what is threatening to become a dead language for our
younger generations? The first is to inculcate a sense of pride in our heritage,
especially in our mother tongue, without decrying, discreditiong or disowning
other languages. We are no linguistic chauvinists and understand the limitations
of Kashmiri but we could take a leaf out of the English language. We have to
enlarge our vocabulary and imbibe new words and expressions. There has to be
finality about our script. Commendable work has been done by our pioneers and is
being carried forward in Devnagri script and I feel we should continue from
there and refine it to suit the unique Kashmiri nuances and inflexions, no doubt
a challenging job for our linguists. Lot of effort has also been made in
bringing the Kashmiri dictionary up to date and more needs to be done in this
direction.

We need to revive the habit of speaking to each other in Koshur, especially
to our children, in whichever part of the world we are resident. The slogan
should be to catch them young if our aim is to reclaim our mother tongue and to
re-implant it on the fertile cerebral soil of our progeny. Attractive pictorial
primers of Koshur need to be published and people encouraged having copies at
their homes. We have moved into the inter-net age. And we are fortunate in
having amongst us many qualified and skilled IT personnel, computer engineers
and software experts who should not find it difficult to create Kashmiri web
sites and open cyberspace in Koshur. We need to provide incentive to our writers
in Koshur whose work has not seen the light of the day; having remained
unpublished for lack of resources and lack of readership. Our authors who have
already published books remain largely unknown, unheard and unread except in a
small literary circle. We should endeavor to finance new editions of their work
and encourage people to get into the spirit of buying books other than
prescribed texts. Our social and cultural functions should mainly be in Koshur
and we should conduct literary events and hold declamation contests and stage
Koshur plays. Cinema and music being strong vehicles for language, creation of
video and audiocassettes and experimenting with Koshur films will go a long way
in this age of media blitz. But, more than anything else, there has to be a
strong will to preserve and propagate Koshur. This demands a sense of deep
commitment to our mother tongue from each one of us.

Kashmiri Overseas Association, Inc. (KOA) is a 501c(3) non-profit, tax-exempt socio-cultural organization registered in Maryland, USA. Its purpose is to protect, preserve, and promote Kashmiri ethnic and socio-cultural heritage, to promote and celebrate festivals, and to provide financial assistance to the needy and deserving.